Wednesday, January 25, 2017

I See the Army Finally Made Up It's Mind About It's New Pistol

The Army has chosen the Sig Sauer P320 as it's new boom stick for the hand.

The Army chose to go Glock without actually going Glock. Strikerfire is the new black so far as Uncle Sam is concerned.

Glock sat out the last round 30 years ago but they sure didn't this time. For which I can't blame the Austrian pistol giant. A half billion dollars over ten years buys a lot of schnapps. Although the truth is that Glock was never really in the running. A pistol without a catch safety was a non-starter to begin with and the idea of a pistol you have to pull the trigger on to dissemble left the Army secretly reeling in horror.

Berretta made a serious play to retain the contract with it's new striker fired pistol but it wasn't quite good enough.

Although you didn't hear about it, CZ was a strong dark horse contender with their P-09. Officially the Army didn't want a hammer fired gun for whatever reason they made up to DQ it. Unofficially the Army was just a little too uncomfortable with a pistol that came from what was once a Warsaw Pact country.

Regardless the Sig isn't really a bad choice. It's modular assembly makes it something that stands out in a crowd. It's just that there didn't really need to be umpteen million spent to determine if the weapon was viable or not. No battle in history has ever been decided with a pistol charge. It is without question the weakest firearm on the battlefield. The fact is that once you determined what you wanted from a pistol you may as well have just pulled a model name out of a hat because none of them were all that different.

Anyway meet the Sig.

The P320 also represents a few leaps forward in pistol design. The P320 is a polymer, striker-fired pistol that Sig first started selling in 2014. The P320 is the first modular pistol that someone can easily modify with interchangeable grip modules. Its caliber can even be changed. All pistols made for the U.S. military will be configurable to receive silencers and will include both standard and extended capacity magazines. These pistols will be made at Sig Sauer’s facilities in New Hampshire.

Sig is going to make a fortune off this one. Oh, not from the military contract that one is going to be 3% profit and 97% headache.

But this gun is going to be starring in every action movie for the next thirty years and that makes it priceless to Sig.